About Chris Chittell who plays Eric
Pollard In Emmerdale

A Huge Big Thank you to
Paul Berridge who has made various profiles and photos availabe.
They were previously on his Beckindale site (that is no more). Below
is one
of those profiles put together circa 2001

When Chris
Chittell was signed to play dodgy dealer Eric Pollard for just 12 episodes
of Emmerdale in 1986, he knew he had to make his mark, having struggled
for years as an actor in a career that had included moving to South Africa
following failed business ventures and running a shop and ferrying
tourists around on a boat in Devon. 'I went for the throat, rather than
fool about,' he recalls. 'I based Pollard on an ex-conman mercenary I knew
in South Africa and a chap who delivered papers to us in Devon and drove
me up the wall. After 12 episodes, I had a break for a couple of months,
then was brought back on and off until, in 1989, I was given a full-time
contract. I've never taken this job for granted. I think that's kept me on
my toes.

'With Pollard
I've always tried not to go for the obvious. So if the scripts says he is
going to go ballistic over some situation, I underplay it. That's where
his strength has been. And you can draw sympathy from a scene that hasn't
been written in that light. The Aldershot-born actor, whose father was in
the Indian Army, dropped plans to join the Navy as a junior radar
technician when, as he was preparing to leave school, a friend suggested
he become a model. An agent sent Chris for an audition at the Old Vic
Theatre in 1963, when that venue became the base for the first National
Theatre Company, under Laurence Olivier. After being auditioned by
Laurence Olivier, he was surprised to be taken on and worked with actors
such as Colin Blakely, Peter 0 Toole, Lindsay Anderson, Michael Cambon,
Derek Jacobi, Robert Stephens and Maggie Smith.

Then Chris
gained television experience, making his dubut in The Loneliness of the
Long Distance Runner, and at the age of 19 appeared in his first film,To
Sir with Love, as an East End toe~rag called Potter,alongside Sidney
Poitie.Television work followed, including appearancesin Knock on Any Door
and The Avengers, and the roleof Nick Carter in two series of the
children's drama Freewheelers. Chris was thrilled to be cast in the film
The Charge of the Light Brigade, directed by Tony Richardson and starring
David Hemmings, Vanessa Redgrave, John Gielgud, Harry Andrews, Trevor
Howard and Jill Bennett. 'It was history in the making,' he recalls. 'I
played 43rd horse on the left and the horse got more close-ups than I
did!'

He continued
to make films, including Raging Moon, The Beast in the Cellar and two
spaghetti Westerns shot in Italy. While making Concertfor a Solo Pistol
there, he fell for an Italian actress who played a chambermaid in it and
subsequently lived with her in Rome for four years.When that relationship
finished, Chris returned home with just £20 in his pocket. 'I bought
myself a bike and did work house-cleaning and flat-cleaning,, he says. In
1976, Chris moved to South Africa, where life appeared to improve and he
appeared in Golden Rendezvous, starring Richard Harris, and Zulu Dawn.

However, the
He also married Caroline Hunt and lived in the Transvaal. In 1980, the
couple decided to return to Britain. 'In my last year in South Africa,'
says Chris, 'I worked for just three weeks.'actor's past began to catch up
with him and work was not forthcoming. Before his move to South Africa,
Chris had appeared in a handful of sex films. 'When I came back,' he says,
'skeletons were coming out of the cupboard, such as films I should not
have made. I had done them when I was on my uppers, after running up
terrible bills and seeing the failure of ventures such as an antiques
business and a restaurant. I thought I would never work in England again
because of the content of those films.'

On their
return to Britain, Chris and Caroline ran a shop in Devon and Chris worked
on boats providing trips for tourists. His return to the stage came at the
Old Vic, alongside Peter O'Toole in Macbeth. Then came the chance of six
weeks in Emmerdale. 'We moved to Newark and here I am still in the
programme more than ten years later,' he says.Chris, who continues to live
in Newark, Nottinghamshire, with wife Caroline and children Benjamin and
Rebecca, saw a revival of Eric Pollard's fortunes in early 1997 after the
character had gone through a quiet patch and the actor himself had
experienced his own problems.

'I've had
panic attacks in the past couple of years, where I couldn't string two
words together in front of the camera without rendering myself to be a
gibbering idiot,' he reveals. 'In this job, you don't know from one year
to another whether yotire going to be gainfully employed. I always thought
I was going to be fired, even years after joining Emmerdale - I thought
they'd find me out. just didn't have any self-esteem as an actor.

'I had a double-act
with James Hooton, who played Sam Dingle, for a while and, after he
decided to leave in 1996, all of a sudden they ceased to write for
Pollard. All I got was a spit and a cough. So I went to the producer and
said, "I can't do this. It's too stressful. Either give me something or
nothing." As a result, they brought in Claudia Malkovich as Dee and
Pollard ended up marrying her. Also I went to see a faith healer on a
regular basis, and then a hypnotherapist who managed to fix me at the
second attempt. All I remember was feeling very tired and her saying, "And
that's between us." I came round and, thank God, I've been on the up ever
since.'